Pain is one of our greatest enemies in life. It restricts us physically, torments us mentally and terrifies us emotionally. While life itself is a gift, living life in constant agony can turn anyone’s existence into utter hell. Days which should be spent working, playing, loving and laughing are instead wasted away in forlorn misery. Nights which should be filled with refreshing sleep and pleasant dreams are instead filled with restlessness and nightmares.
In my correspondence with all of you, I have learned all about the incredible influence of physical misery on our lives.
Pain and Fear
Although chronic suffering itself is enough of a curse, the most powerful effect it creates inside our hearts and minds is fear. We spend so much time being afraid to move, afraid to act, afraid to do, afraid to not do, afraid to bend, afraid to cough, afraid to run, afraid to sit, afraid to lift, afraid to make love, afraid to live.
These are all common complaints of the majority of back ache patients I know. Fear is primal and fear is pervasive. Fear will control your life just as much, if not more, than any physical symptom can ever do.
Emotional and Physical Interactions
Emotional anguish is far more powerful than simple bodily suffering. The subconscious emotional mind holds on to sensitive issues for life and is reluctant to deal with these problematic concerns. The subconscious mind will not allow repressed thoughts and feelings to become conscious, since it fears the effects these issues will have on the overall self.
Ironically, if the repressed emotions were conscious, they could be actively acknowledged and dealt with, rendering them completely impotent to cause us harm. The subconscious will not let go of these troublesome emotional issues and instead allows them to plague us with a lifelong barrage of psychological and psychosomatic crises. It is this repression process which creates the need for many cases of chronic agony to exist.
A Life of Pain
Discomfort can become a constant unwanted companion, a tutor of undesired lessons, a harbinger of doom and gloom and a potential apocalypse in the future. Suffering can become a lifestyle.
Misery can even become who you are minute to minute, day to day, year to year. I recognized this pattern in myself long ago. I allowed my innermost feelings, fears and repressions to cause me physical torture. This psychosomatic suffering can actually create physical symptoms and can perpetuate or worsen existing health concerns. For me, the symptoms went directly to my lower back. I endured decades of horrific turmoil from my chronic lumbar back ache and more recent neck symptoms.
Now, I no longer have pain and I do not fear it or cater to its every whim.
Ending the Pain
We are all emotional beings. Some of us are suffering completely due to a psychosomatic syndrome which creates symptoms in your body, because of causative emotional concerns in your subconscious mind. Some of you have a physical injury or weakness which has been exploited by this same psychosomatic process. Some of you have symptoms due to purely physical, structural, anatomical sources.
Regardless of which category you fall into now, the lesson for you is clear. Understand the processes which cause torment. Acknowledge the emotional sources and contributors to your suffering and learn to circumvent their power over your physical body.
Take control of your emotional mind and learn to put it to work for you, not against you to create a condition of optimal health. This process is called knowledge therapy. Although not a reliable cure for every suffering in life, it is one of the best methods of putting our agony in perspective, while simultaneously understanding where it comes from and how to diminish its effects on us all.
